May 6, 2014

Forty Years/Forty Stories: Celebrating The Ulrich Museum, Millie the Millipede and Wichita State University

Forty Years/Forty Stories: Celebrating The Ulrich Museum, Millie the Millipede and Wichita State University Yarn Bombing at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University

Yarn Bombing at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University

Hello Wichita: File under discovering the Ulrich Museum....the unique charm of Millie's yarn bomb outfit.....and the welcoming vibe and peaceful grounds of WSU.

Millie is busy every day welcoming everyone into WSU at the 17th Street entrance--surrounded by flowers and students and visitors and inviting all of the people and all of the children to see her Ulrich Museum situated just past her smiling face and her shoes and socks........yes, she has socks created by the yarn bombers, too.

You really have to come and see it........

The yarn bomb of Millie the Millipede, the giant brass sculpture by Tom Otterness, puts everything into real time......the display is current and temporary.....it's community....it draws the neighbors in by its' unique beauty and curiosity alone.

But right now, Millie has a really cute, colorful knitted outfit......she is so stylish in her pastel springtime stripes.......

Millie shouts welcome to every passer by--come over and see me--touch me.......

Her charm is inescapable--and she knows it.

Obsessed with Millie, the yarn bomb and the Ulrich........so honored to find out more information from Jessy Clonts Day......the PR Manager at the U:

I feel like WSU and the Ulrich is a very friendly and welcoming place.....how would you like to be perceived in Wichita.

We would like to be considered as the region’s source for modern and contemporary art, and that we connect viewers with artists and artworks that reflect our world today.

Are you a public museum.

Yes, we are a public museum! We offer free admission to our galleries, and our 76-piece Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection is always free and always open.

Who can go to your museum........what ages.....is it just for the students of WSU

We encourage anyone and everyone to visit the Ulrich. We offer free admission, parking, and group tours. We also offer bus reimbursement to schools to make field trips easier for educators to plan.

Who runs your museum......who do you answer to......who makes the decision about what art work or expositions will be there.

The Ulrich Museum of Art is a part of Wichita State University. We do have a staff who runs various departments of the museum, led by our director, Bob Workman.

How and why did you get started with the yarn bomb

Yarn bombing is a type of street art that employs crochet and knitting rather than paint or chalk. It’s a worldwide practice that only seems to be growing in popularity. The Ulrich tries to stay at the forefront of the art of our time, so in spring of 2012 we organized the yarn bombing of around 30 sculptures in the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. The project was overseen by Kristen Beal of Harvester Arts, and the group of volunteers worked through the summer to install the show in September 2012. That yarn bombing was up just over two weeks, and we saw thousands of people come through campus to view them.

This year we celebrate our 40th anniversary of the Ulrich with the exhibition Forty Years/Forty Stories. Throughout the three galleries on our second floor we highlight the art objects, people, and stories that have shaped the museum since its opening in 1974. The yarn bombing was such a memorable story that we enlisted “Millie’s Knitters” to yarn bomb Tom Otterness’ Millipede (affectionately nicknamed “Millie”) once more. And once more, Millie has received lots of attention!

To me the yarn bomb makes everything seem so homey welcoming and beautiful........it makes it seem like part of the community and it is fun and I usually do not get that impression about most museums.

Also, how much time does it take, can anyone join their group..........

“Millie’s Knitters" is a private group of long-time friends who gather weekly to knit and spend time together. Many of them happen to be Ulrich members, which is how we were able to connect with this group this year.

Also......do you want to talk about the courtyard and fountain......I love the fountain and my dog gets a nice drink of water every time we walk over there.

The courtyard of the museum came about in a renovation in the mid-90s. At that time the museum commissioned Texas artist Jesus Morales to create three granite structures around the museum entrance: Granite Landscape, Granite Weaving, and Fountain Wall, all made in 1995. The fountain is a gorgeous feature that we love being able to share with the public. In fact, just this afternoon we hosted a reception for the WSU Honors College in the courtyard, and they took a group photo in front of the fountain. And of course for maintenance and upkeep, we turn off the water during the winter months. The water was just turned back on April 25.

JESSY CLONTS DAY

Public Relations & Marketing Manager

ULRICH MUSEUM OF ART

Wichita State University

1845 Fairmount St.

Wichita, KS 67260-0046

(316) 978-6462

ON VIEW April 26–August 3, 2014

FORTY YEARS / FORTY STORIES

F: facebook.com/ulrichmuseum | T: @ulrichmuseum

my take.....come over and see me--Millie wants everyone to get up close...........

Thank you, Jessy Clonts Day, for taking time to tell us about your beautiful and friendly museum.....I walk there almost every day and I just love it.........I hope everyone in Wichita can have an opportuity to visit the giant, inspirational, craftsy and fun sculpture of Millie and have a peaceful breath of fresh air at the fountain--it's well worth your time.

What, Bacon in Israel.....I'm Going there Right Now

from Salon: I'm going to israel right now..........
SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2014 09:00 PM UTC

Israel’s newest delicacy is delicious — if far from kosher

Smuggled into Jerusalem in shopping bags, the Aziz Butchers' bacon dazzles foreign journalists and diplomats alike

NOGA TARNOPOLSKY, GLOBALPOST

TOPICS: GLOBALPOST, WEST BANK, ISRAEL, BACON, LIFE NEWS, NEWS

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

BEIT JALA, West Bank — The fact of the matter is that it is not that difficult to buy pork in Jerusalem.

Most supermarkets in the city, including the large chains, are either kosher or halal, and thus do not carry the product. But between the secular, native-born Muslims and Jews, Christians, the local tribe of internationals, and Russian Jews who lost many kosher habits during 70 years under communism, a significant number of consumers hanker after the rosy meat.

In fact, the stringency of Jewish and Muslim prohibitions against pork may well serve to heighten the desire for it in a city that almost glows with religious fervor.

In recent months, among journalists and diplomats stationed in town — men and women alike — there has been a quiet thrumming about someone referred to as “the beautiful pork guy in Beit Jala.”

GlobalPost set out to uncover what the buzz was all about.

Israel districts numbered (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Beit Jala is a Palestinian Christian town between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, right on the seam between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. Its inhabitants are largely Greek Orthodox Christians. The fact that it is outside of Israel proper makes it illegal to re-enter Israel carrying meat, but the law is laxly applied.

The Alsoos family has had a butcher’s shop in the center of town, and a pig farm adjacent to it, since 1920.

Today, the shop is small and conspicuously well-kept, with two large meat refrigerators behind the counter and, in the front of the store, two smaller display cases holding an impressive array of salamis, mortadella, smoked bacon, and sausages in an alluring rainbow ranging from cream to a deeply rusty red, studded with points of fat.

At any given moment at the Aziz Butchers, you are likely to hear three or four or more languages murmured by customers considering their options.

Busily manning the counter is Raf Alsoos, 24, a third-generation pig farmer and general meat man, who, as GlobalPost can attest, possesses a winning smile and warm manner that easily draws customers who may have more mundane sources of pork closer at hand.

All the fresh meat is produced at the Alsoos farm. For any locavore meat-lover trapped in a desert of pre-cut, mass-industry meat counters, the cuts here are a sigh-worthy dream: bright and light and pink. Raf commonly advises the doubtful about which cuts better fit an Easter barbecue (chops and souvlaki cubes), and which would be best roasted and served on a platter. Sixty percent of their current business, according to Raf, comes from “journalists and embassies.”

To the almost certain surprise of his international clients, many of whom delight in the titillation of crossing from Israel into Palestine for the procurement of a taboo substance, all the smoked and processed meats come from … “Tel Aviv,” Raf says, laughing. “Some friend of my dad’s makes it. They’ve known each other since 1993.”

These meats can be said to be doubly smuggled: spirited informally into Palestine in the trunk of a car, and then carried back into Jerusalem in small portions in shopping bags, under the eyes of checkpoint soldiers who do not seem unduly exercised by the prospect of illicitly imported salami.

Aziz, Raf’s father, says that business boomed between 1970 and 2000. That is local code for describing the relatively prosperous years bracketed by the Six Day War, in 1967, and the second intifada.

“Before the intifada and the wall going up,” Aziz says, referring to the security wall Israel built during the eruption of violence in the early 2000s, “eighty percent of my clients were Israelis. I have a lot of Israeli friends.”

In the early ’90s, looking for new partnerships, he met Chanan Abramovich (the Tel Avivite Raf mentioned), who had recently acquired a flagging pork business from Karl Berg, a retiree.

Abramovich, who is 62, says “Aziz and I met many, many years ago. It wasn’t just salami. We’ve been friends for years. He and I worked together trading males and females for our farms, or I’d bring him medicine for the animals.”

Today, Karl Berg, which retained its original name under Abramovich, is established as one of Israel’s top pork producing operations, beneath the unrivalled pork superpower Kibbutz Mizra. Historically, the collectivist kibbutz movement has been militantly secular, and several kibbutzim currently produce pork products.

The Romanian-born Abramovich, whose family fled the communist regime when he was 12, owns the processing plant in Holon, a Tel Aviv bedroom community, and a pig farm of about 10,000 heads in Iblin, a Christian town in the Galilee. In Holon they smoke the bacon, for example, that the Alsoos family’s customers so crave. The Abramoviches also own a shop in Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem’s central market, which proved useful to Aziz Alsoos after the wall went up. For a while, ”when I had orders from Jerusalem I’d take the meat from Karl Berg in the market and not from my shop, because of the checkpoint.”

In 2004, the Alsoos family moved to Canada to seek a better future. Aziz now runs a Middle Eastern restaurant outside Toronto, from which he spoke to GlobalPost.

But last July, Raf, who had helped his dad out every summer, decided to come back and run the family business with an older brother. ”I have my own business,” he shrugs. “Why would I want to work for anyone else? And it’s fun to work with meat,” he adds.

The next generation is taking over at Chanan Abramovich’s business, as well. When he spoke with GlobalPost, Abramovich, who travels frequently, was “in Normandy, enjoying the seafood.” Back at the meat plant, his son Ran, 29, was expecting a pick-up from Raf Alsoos that very day.

Like Raf Alsoos, Ran Abramovich proudly says the business is “100 percent meat, no fillers, no substitutes.” The two families’ intertwined businesses — youthful, artisanal, local — could be a Brooklyn cliche, all the more startling considering the West Bank surroundings.

But it’s no surprise that the Alsoos family’s Jerusalem clients are willing to bend the rules to get their hands on the meat. The pork chops grill up crisp and succulent, and Karl Berg’s black pepper salami is an irresistible accompaniment for a cold beer.

The fact of the matter is, not only is pork available in Israel: It’s superb.

Roger Waters Begs Mick Jagger for the Sake of Palestine

from Salon:
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2014 06:15 PM UTC

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Nick Mason: Why Rolling Stones shouldn’t play in Israel

Band's founding members come together to argue in favor of the BDS movement -- and urge the Stones to reconsider

NICK MASON AND ROGER WATERS

Roger Waters at Earls Court, London. Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason joined the group, alongside drummer Graham Broad for Dark Side during the Saturday show. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Mick Jagger with The Rolling Stones 1972 tour at Winterland in San Francisco, in June (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TOPICS: ROLLING STONES, PINK FLOYD, ISRAEL, PALESTINE, BOYCOTT, BDS, ENTERTAINMENT NEWS,POLITICS NEWS

Roger Waters (Credit: AP/Vadim Ghirda)

With the recent news that the Rolling Stones will be playing their first-ever concert in Israel, and at what is a critical time in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom and equal rights, we, the two surviving founders of Pink Floyd, have united in support of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a growing, nonviolent global human rights movement initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 to end Israel’s occupation, racial discrimination and denial of basic Palestinian rights.

The BDS movement is modeled on the successful nonviolent movements that helped end Jim Crow in the American South and apartheid in South Africa. Indeed, key figures who led the South African freedom struggle, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mandela’s close associate, Ahmed Kathrada, have come out in support of BDS for Palestinian rights. BDS offers us all a way to nonviolently pressure the Israeli government to fully realize that its injustices against the Palestinian people are legally and morally unacceptable and unsustainable.

The movement does not advocate a particular political framework — one state or two — and neither do we. Rather, we call for a resolution that upholds freedom, justice and equal rights for all, irrespective of identity, and does not cause additional suffering for either people.

So, to the bands that intend to play Israel in 2014, we urge you to reconsider. Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of South African apartheid; regardless of your intentions, crossing the picket line provides propaganda that the Israeli government will use in its attempts to whitewash the policies of its unjust and racist regime.

We are nearing the tipping point in global awareness that the denial of Palestinian rights has had a devastating impact on generations of people, and that they need our support now more than ever. Consequently, we encourage you, fellow artists, to ask yourselves what you would do if forced to live under military rule and discriminatory laws for decades. If the answer is that you would resist until justice prevailed, we ask that you champion BDS as a nonviolent, collective means of securing a better future for all. If you wouldn’t play Sun City, back in the day, as you, the Rolling Stones did not, then don’t play Tel Aviv until such time as freedom reigns for all and equal rights is the law of the land.

“Together We Stand”